I think at this point we can amicably disagree, though I’m curious why you think the ‘more people = more animals exploited’ philosophy applies to people in Africa, but not in the future. One might hope that we learn to do better, but it seems like that hope could be applied to and criticised in either scenario.
I do worry about future animal suffering. It’s partly for that reason that I’m less concerned about reducing risks of extinction than I am about reducing other existential risks that will result in large amounts of suffering in the future. This informed some of my choices of interventions for which I am ‘not clueless about’. E.g.
Technical AI alignment / AI governance and coordination research: it has been suggested that misaligned AI could be a significant s-risk.
Expanding our moral circle: relevance to future suffering should be obvious.
Global priorities research: this just seems robustly good as how can increasing moral understanding be bad?
Research into consciousness: seems really important in light of the potential risk of future digital minds suffering.
Research into improving mental health: improving mental health has intrinsic worth and I don’t see a clear link to increasing future suffering (in fact I lean towards thinking happier people/societies are less likely to act in morally outrageous ways).
I do lean towards thinking reducing extinction risk is net positive in expectation too, but I am quite uncertain about this and I don’t let it motivate my personal altruistic choices.
I think at this point we can amicably disagree, though I’m curious why you think the ‘more people = more animals exploited’ philosophy applies to people in Africa, but not in the future. One might hope that we learn to do better, but it seems like that hope could be applied to and criticised in either scenario.
I do worry about future animal suffering. It’s partly for that reason that I’m less concerned about reducing risks of extinction than I am about reducing other existential risks that will result in large amounts of suffering in the future. This informed some of my choices of interventions for which I am ‘not clueless about’. E.g.
Technical AI alignment / AI governance and coordination research: it has been suggested that misaligned AI could be a significant s-risk.
Expanding our moral circle: relevance to future suffering should be obvious.
Global priorities research: this just seems robustly good as how can increasing moral understanding be bad?
Research into consciousness: seems really important in light of the potential risk of future digital minds suffering.
Research into improving mental health: improving mental health has intrinsic worth and I don’t see a clear link to increasing future suffering (in fact I lean towards thinking happier people/societies are less likely to act in morally outrageous ways).
I do lean towards thinking reducing extinction risk is net positive in expectation too, but I am quite uncertain about this and I don’t let it motivate my personal altruistic choices.